Controversial director Woody Allen is trading in la-di-das for ooh-la-las.
The embattled “Annie Hall” director, 86, is pivoting from New York neuroses to actually filming in French for his newest — and potentially final — movie, he told Paris-based weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche in a new interview.
“I’m moving to Paris in September, for a two-year-old project postponed because of the Covid. This will be my 50th feature film. I found the financing in the United States, but the cast is entirely French and the film will be played in your language,” Allen told the outlet, according to a translation.
He likened the film to his 2005 psychological thriller, “Match Point,” starring then-frequent collaborator Scarlett Johansson (who also starred in Allen’s “Scoop” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) calling the new project “a sort of amorous and poisonous thriller.”
The film — which Allen said “may be the last” for his storied, now-polarizing career — isn’t his first in France, also the setting for 2014′s “Magic in the Moonlight,” nor The City of Light, which gave its name to “Midnight in Paris” in 2011. The latter, a fantasy romantic-comedy starring Owen Wilson as the avatar for Allen, won the writer-director-actor his last Oscar to date, for best original screenplay.
Though ousted from Hollywood following resurfaced allegations that he sexually abused adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, Allen has continued to work in Europe. He has denied Farrow’s allegations.
“I am an author and no one can prevent me from writing, and therefore from working,” Allen told the outlet. “It is the guarantee of my freedom and my independence.”
The new interview comes on the heels of Allen’s Instagram Live conversation with Alec Baldwin last week, in which he spoke about potentially leaving filmmaking behind.
“I’m 86 years old. But I like staying home and writing,” he told Baldwin, 64. “I’ll probably make at least one more movie, but a lot of the thrill is gone because it doesn’t have the whole cinema effect.”
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